Bonneville America Forums Forums Off Topic Discussion Forums Lounge Heat pump hot water heaters

Our old hot water heater threw in the towel yesterday. It was a Supreme by US water heaters, lifetime guarantee and was 16 years old. Much to my surprise, the company was still in business , gave me a claim # and told me to take the old heater to Lowe's and they would give me a replacement. Yea!
At Lowe's, they gave me a gift card worth $489.30 for the replacement which I promptly used towards a second generation GE Geospring Hybrid Heat Pump hot water heater. Lowe's has $200 off, along with my card discount of 5% and 5% more savings, The bottom line was 472.57, about what I thought I'd spend on a regular heater. Not bad so far for a unit that has a MSRP of $1199.
Does anyone have any experience with that model or other HPWHs? I want this to save me some money to use riding and enjoying the America.

I'm not familiar with those. I've installed an on demand style for a whole house with a $1200 price tag but I'm just a dumb mechanic. I've heard of heat pump heaters and air conditioning and I'm not familiar how they work even compaired to the conventional furnace and ac...Good luck..



mike

you can get a tax credit for this unit

I'm not familiar with heat pump water heaters either, but hopefully they are not like the furnaces that take a while to manage extreme outside temperatures changes. I would investigate recovery times, how long it takes to get hot water after it's been depleted.

Does anyone make an Air Condition/Water Heater combined unit, and they do. Get idea if you want to add A/C to a room or a garage and the bonus is you get, mostly free, hot water. Sometimes I amaze myself with cool stuff I think up that someone else has already thought up.


http://www.hotspotenergy.com/air-conditioner-water-heaters/

a pool heater is probably about the same as what you are talking about and basicly they work very much like an A/C/system only in reverse. a heat pump to cool/heat a home has a valve (reversing valve) that does just that when in coolong mode you will feel hot air blowing out of the condenser (outside unit) and when in heat mode you will feel cold air from that unit. there is all the things that are in an A/C/ system, just all contained in one pkg. i think it going to depend on how cold the water is to start because you usually only get about a 20 degree f difference at best??

I've been checking up on these and they claim to be more efficient (and probably are) than the old standing pilot H2O heater I got in my basement (BTW...it's a Sears Kenmore).

It's just a matter of time before it shoots craps & I "haveta" pony up the $$$ for a new one. The Kenmore has been in service since 1965 (according to the factory SN/Model plate......that's 47 yrs ). They don't make em like that anymore for sure!

The GE Geospring hybrid gets good ratings, it's made by Rheem. It's basically an electric water heater with a built in heat pump exchanger that heats intake water. It puts out cool air, which would be a plus in warm climes. So basically it recharges like a normal electric heater and can be ran on regular electric heater mode.

As my name may suggest I'm a journeyman refrigeration mechanic and gas fitter in Canada eh. Yeah the heat pump water heaters work good depends on what you pay for electricity and gas. My personal preference is to replace mid efficient hot water tanks with a high efficiency instant hot, hot water heater. You will never have to pay to maintain your tanks storage temp as there is no storage tank! Most residential mechanical rooms are very tiny. An instant hot is much much smaller so you gain room to work on the equipment for servicing or repair. Only downside for an instant hot is you may have to upgrade your gas line to the appliance as well as install a different kind of venting.

I agree, I would go for the gas instant hot water system, although all these new products are relatively expensive up front. None of them are really new technologies. Plus, gas will continue to get relatively cheap, with fracking, etc.

Fracking makes me sick to my stomach

Better get use to it, it's the future. The fossil fuel revolution that's about to happen may be the only thing that saves us from economic armageddon.

I was surprised that Lowe's let me use the gift card for another brand, but it was a gift card, so I guess I could have used it for anything Lowe's sells. Whether things went as they were supposed to or not, the GE Geospring heat pump hot water heater is in our basement purring like a kitten and making hot water. Currently it is running in the heat pump only mode (with the slowest recovery), but there are 3 other modes "hybrid" (with conventional electric resistance elements assistance for quicker recovery), "high demand" which brings the electric heaters on sooner, "electric only" (electric elements only), and a "vacation" that reduces your water temp until 1 day before your return.
So far, so good. The unit is fairly quiet (somewhat louder than a refrigerator), but probably too loud to be in a bedroom closet. An added benefit is that the unit dehumidifies the discharge air (since it blows through the cold evaporator coil and drains the condensate to a drain pipe) and circulates all of the air in the basement.
The jury is out on the overall value of the unit, but in the "heat pump only" mode, it is only using 575 watts of power instead of 4500 watts on the elements. I'm sure it will be using the 575 watts for a longer period of recovery time than the 4500 watt elements, but the idea is that the heat pump will be much more efficient than the resistance elements. I will advise how the unit does as we move into the future. GE says $300 or so dollars per year electric savings in the hybrid mode with temp set at 135 degrees. I expect somewhat similar $$$ savings in the real world as we have the temp at 125 degrees and in the heat pump only mode, but don't have the lab conditions that the data was derived from.

After checking GE's website for more specs, I found that I was wrong about the "heat pump only" mode power consumption. It is only 550 watts instead of the 575 I had in the post earlier. If it gets any better, GE will be paying me to get hot water.